


Mahabharati

by toujours_nigel



Category: Mahabharata - Vyasa
Genre: BAMF Women, Female Friendship, Female Protagonist, Female Relationships, Hindu Character, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Multi, POV Female Character, Women Being Awesome, Women In Power
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-30 01:32:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 31
Words: 3,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18305453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: Drabble collection for the women of the Mahabharata, originally on tumblr.





	1. Ila

Ila is a mother.

Ila is divine, is born of gods, is a sage, is a preceptress of sages.

Ila is a daughter wished into a son stumbled into a daughter.

Ila is Manu’s child, Ila is Kardama’s child, Ila is Manu’s bride.

Ila is Ikshvaku’s eldest, youngest, only sibling.

Ila is only ever Ila in Budh’s arms. Ila is always Ila. Ila is always in Budh’s arms, even as Sudyumna.

Ila is a father to sons who never inherit. Ila’s sons inherit Bahlika from their father. Ila sires no sons.

Ila is Pururavas’ mother, the mother of a race.


	2. Urvashi

Who cares, about the goats, the ghee, the illumined nudity? Nobody, beyond the test.

Everything is a test, when you’re an apsara; even your very existence, when you’re Urvashi. Proof that Nara-Narayana could procure better to sate themselves should desire prove unbiddable? And then to turn her over to Indra like a gift, like nothing.

Everything is a test, a trap that has now been sprung. Urvashi is going home to her sisters, who never tire of her, who ask for no facade of mortality.

Pururavas will dry his tears, find peace in the sons she means to gift him.


	3. Shakuntala

She learns this early: all animals protect their young, as she had been found wing-shaded and taken in to disrupt with her babble the quiet holiness of the hermitage.

She grows and her eyes grow with her, wandering wooded paths and watching animals bill and coo and kill for their young. It is a lesson of the jungle that all must learn, or risk finding how swiftly the docilest does, the sweetest birds draw blood with hoof and claw when their herbs and nests are threatened.

It is not knowledge they impart to princes, but Dushyanta will learn it well.


	4. Ganga

She treads mortal paths twice, once for sun-splendid Bhagirath who prays to wash away his ancestors' sins and raise them up whole again; once for moon-sly Shantanu who dares look upon her with greedy eyes.

This is a lie. Never trust a river, never trust a god. She descends in response to a prayer for help, as any goddess should.

Once there was a king who stared his fill of a goddess. Once there were eight godlings who stole a cow and enraged a sage. Once there was a king surprised by a goddess.

And then there were his sons.


	5. Satyavati

Her sons love their brother most, and Devavrat keeps darting guilty glances at her when he meets her with them hanging off his shoulders.

It is only the guilt that is surprising. The father who sired her loved her brother best, the father who raised her loved peace for his people. Parasar loved the thought of a child before he had sired one, and whatever Vyas loves best in the world, it is not his mother. Even Shantanu, who senselessly desired her, had loved his son more.

Satyavati has greater things to worry her than the love of her menfolk.


	6. Amba

Salwa arrives a week before the other kings, and Amba’s smile is brighter than the nine-branched bronze lamps lighting her chamber, and her waking life sweeter than dreams. In ten days they will be wed and she will be his wife and happy.

In her quieter moments Amba can admit that her mother has reason for her fears. Kashi is ancient and opulent, and blessed by the divine river. Salwa is little and ragged, but in its palaces they remember Princess Savitri of Madra, and in Madra the princesses train alongside their brothers.

Amba will be Salwa’s queen, and happy.


	7. Ambika

Ambika is eighteen when she loses her sister and becomes the eldest; nineteen when she loses her husband and becomes a widow; twenty when she loses her freedom and twenty still when she becomes a mother.

She sits with her son till the sun sets and rises again, his mouth seeking her breast blindly, his little hands already grasping at her. In the morning she goes to her sister and warns her to keep her eyes open, her mouth shut and hope for sons.

Ambika is twenty-three when she loses her sister and becomes the eldest. She’s wept herself dry.


	8. Ambalika

“May you live,” Ambalika tells her new daughter-in-law, “to see your sons bring you glory. It is a woman’s greatest joy.”

She doesn’t mean much more by it than the rote words, but the girl lifts her gaze from its obeisance and says, “And if I have daughters?”

It is the first sensible utterance Ambalika has heard in... oh, in years, since the boys grew too old for honest curiosity. It makes her look at Pritha properly, her painted forehead, her questioning eyes, her chin raised in determination rare in a new bride.

“May you live to see them safe.”


	9. Kripi

When Drona comes home empty-handed she tells him, “We will go back to Hastinapur,” and weathers his storms of accusations about the ingratitude of kings.

She knows it, and better than him, grew up forever tagging along behind Chitrangad and Vichitravirya, playing with their cast-off toys, thinking her life wonderful if they noticed her. She was in the palace when Chitrangad’s funeral pyre was lit; still there when Vichitravirya followed his brother in a year.

“Aswatthama and I will live with my brother,” she says when Drona’s flooding words are dammed. “You can wander if your pride balks at princes.”


	10. Gandhari

She is not born wise, but made so like any woman in the grinding-stone of life. Shakuni alone remembers when she was a girl ferreting in crags, as she alone remembers when his smile was untinged with bitterness: frightened children clutched close in in the belly of the beast.

Once there was a princess, only daughter of a king with valiant sons. She was beloved and god-touched, and a prince asked her hand in marriage for his nephew. Her brothers took the princess to the plains for her wedding, and never rode home again. The princess grew wise and lonely.


	11. Rohini

Rohini marries Vasudeva as a declaration of her father’s trust in his, so often the fate of a great man’s first wife. No hearts are tied together at their wedding, but she is content enough: he’s a handsome man and his father’s eldest son, entertaining when in good humour, rational in council, a capable enough warrior to know when to send others to fight his battles.

She sends him off with a smile and a song when Sini wins him Devaki’s hand. An alliance with Mathura keeps Magadh neutral, and she can bolster it further with Srutadeva and Srutashrava’s marriages.


	12. Yashoda

Her mother is an unkind woman, her sister no better, both embittered with life, and Yashoda is every day a hundred times thankful for her husband, and a thousand times for her son. Even Nanda’s words and Kanu’s antics have never won a smile from her mother, but they have made Yashoda’s life sweet as honey, rich as the fresh butter the boys are always trying to steal.

“Ayaan isn’t like them,” she says. “It’s hard on anyone to be childless, it’s soured his temper. Just bring a child into your lives, and you’ll find joy.”

“I understand,” Radha answers.


	13. Devaki

There is blood drying in the sun when Devaki steps out into the courtyard, dazzling after sixteen years of rough-hewed walls after nine years of a gilded prison: a rich red nothing like the brown stain she has seen every day for sixteen years; new blood and freshly spilled. Warm when she bends and draws her fingers through it, viscous and still pliable. She could draw with it as she once had with dampened rice flour in this courtyard: twenty-five years ago when she was a girl stepping into womanhood.

“Mother,” a boy says, hands raising her up. “Come away.”


	14. Pritha

She is happy for a year, between Pandu’s death and Bhima’s drowning, in the high-walled inner palaces of Hastinapuri, in the chambers where Queen Ambalika lived when Pritha was a bride scant months from her father’s home. Her sons look only to her for guidance, her brother is free of his prison, she can climb to the ramparts and watch wheat fields rippling off into the glimmering horizon and never fear that the supply train will arrive late or never.

She can converse with Gandhari, drink in her brilliant words as she once had drunk wine with Pandu and Madri.


	15. Madri

Madri loved horses, as a child. In some other land this might have made for a rare princess, but everyone loved horses in Madra where children learnt to ride as soon as they could keep a seat and grip a rein, and lived half their lives in stables.

The greatest temples in Madra were dedicated to the Ashwini twins, healers and horse-lords, and their symbol stamped on every saddle, woven into the pennants fluttering white and gold above the war-chariots of Madra.

Shalya comes home alone from a fight with Hastinapuri. Madri, prisoner-wife, summons the divine twins to her bed.


	16. Revati

Revati revisits the mortal realm and finds it shrunken: the people smaller and their squabbles sordid, all the greatness of her childhood dreams vanished as she awaited the idle moments of the gods. Her father is as surprised as she, and worse able to bear it.

On their third day they meet a straggling line: women and children in overburdened chariots and carts, men coaxing tired animals onwards. Revati, cursed with a kind heart, steps out from the eaves of the forest—least-changed of all things, though even the trees seem shorter—and helps heave a cart-wheel from a rut.


	17. Hidimbi

“This one,” she says, “your god-like son; my heart has caught on his prowess. I ask this boon from you, that you let me marry him.”

When she had seen only ten summers swim past, Hidimbi had watched her brother challenge their uncle and win. She saw it for months, whenever she closed her eyes: the devastated forest, her uncle’s ribcage struggling to expand, Hidimba’s hand purple with lifeblood. She’s seeing it now again, as though enacted by some master of the trade, every dodge, every blow impossibly perfect, her brother struggling against a mortal.

Oh, the sons he’ll sire!


	18. Satyabhama

She doesn’t love her husband to the tune of a thousand songs and swoonings. No great loss for him, when he has a thousand other women ready to die for a smile or an hour of his love, and her only path to sanity. Look you, she was twelve when he came from Mathura glorious, with peacock feathers in his hair and his parents following him; she grew to womanhood in a household that resented him and were happy to give her away to save their reputations. She can’t love him like his other wives.

His friends are easier company.


	19. Vrishali

“As you wish,” is all her husband’s answer, when Vrishali suggests—at first timorous—how a garden ought be planted or a matter of policy enforced or even—as she grows in daring—what crops might grow best in Anga’s rocky soil, underneath the spreading trees.

It is heartening, when in any other land she would have been a minor wife married for pity, to find herself so prized, and she includes a ream of gratitude in her next letter to her father.

Karna, when she tries to thank him, says only, “You are a princess; I a charioteer’s son.”


	20. Draupadi

“They’re happy,” Shikhandi tells her in the fourth year of exile. The camp is quiet, her husbands and companions asleep and his scouts shadows moving against the fire. With dawn it will be Srutakarma’s birthday, and he will turn six.

“I’m glad,” Draupadi says.

“You’re furious.”

“I’m furious.”

“Good,” Shikhandi says, and kisses the tangle of her hair. “Fury can be made to serve if you feed it. Uma had them write you letters; I’ll give you them in the morning.”

“Even Srutakarma?”

“Well,” Sikhandi laughs, “he daubed ink on paper and called it proof of love.”

“I’ll treasure it.”


	21. Bhanumati

She goes laughing into the chariot when Karna wins her, eschewing his extended hand and only laughing harder when she has to grope for a handhold as it careens over the rough ground. They don’t teach princesses how to keep their feet in war-chariots, in the court of Queen Chandramudra.

“I will learn,” she tells Karna when she is steadier, not as artless an admission as it may appear. Bhanumati is ambitious but not foolish, and Duryodhan’s reputation intriguingly ambiguous: a man who would send his cousins to their death and his friend to fetch a bride.

“I’ll teach you.”


	22. Dushala

Dushala grows up quiet, and careful, and clever. She has a hundred brothers and five cousins and they’re all loud. She has a blind father and a blinded mother and their paths must be kept clear. She has an uncle who is wise and an uncle who is wily.

Dushala grows up cossetted, and callous, and cruel. She has a hundred brothers and two uncles and parents who only turn to her when of a mind to be indulgent. She is Hastinapuri’s princess and a hundred maids hang on her every word. She is Duryodhana’s beloved sister, his particular pet.


	23. Sudeshna

“You must always protect your sister,” Sudeshna tells her son, as her mother had told Kichaka in her hearing.

“You must always cherish your brother,” she tells her daughter, and later draws her close and adds, “Uttaraa, you cannot depend upon him to beat a path to your destiny.”

Uttaraa is thirteen, slight of limb and sweet of temperament and—unhappy thought—a little scared of her mother. “I shall not,” she says, with her heart wandering already towards songs and laughter and the company of her friends, and Sudeshna sighs and turns her loose.

Sudeshna learnt, she will too.


	24. Ulupi

Ulupi swims upstream when she’s young, past the glimmering cities of Pataliputra and Kashi and Prayag, into the frozen fastnesses of the Himalayas. This far north the river speaks with a maiden’s voice that thrums in her blood and lulls her to sleep, snake-curled in her den, her heart beating slow.

She wakes as spring thaws the lower peaks and brings water rushing down the slope. She swims downstream as summer heat brings humans rushing to the river, forging friendships as she goes. In monsoon she comes home again, water raining down in welcome and filling the air with sweetness.


	25. Chitrangadaa

Chitrangadaa the valiant would have been a hero even if her father had sired sons. You can find them in the songs of Manipur, women who stalk their prey through silent forests, wield boarspears and longbows, slay men as unflinchingly as stags.

With her brothers dead, in the womb and in the world, Chitrangadaa is her father’s general, his first minister, the most strident voice in his council. All of Manipur rests on her sturdy shoulders—a tiring, well-beloved weight—and she has little time to wander the woods she so loved as a child.

But in autumn she hunts.


	26. Subhadra

Subhadra is a child of joy, born of the relieved meeting of ageing bodies that had loved each other when young.

Her laughter rings out in Mathura drowning the weeping infant ghosts of brothers long-dead, and her voice is the brightest bell a nation of herders have ever heard. Her feet never touch the ground, all the long way to Dwaraka, and she travels in loving arms and perches on broad shoulders: everyone’s favourite, a living sign of a new future, of hope after imprisoned, embattled years.

Rohini is wreathed in smiles for her, Devaki graciously unbending, Vasudeva forever indulgent.


	27. Rukmini

Every action has consequences. Your brother hunts you down when you elope; your husband’s other wives look upon you bitterly when you bring enemies in your dowry; the wealthiest of them contemptuously brings you her jewellery so you can dress as befits an Yadava queen. What she didn’t know of consequences as a child, Rukmini has learnt as a new bride.

But she knew much already. Strive and you’ll reach your goals; smile and you’ll make friends; find goodness in people and they’ll surprise you.

She has no enemies in Dwaraka, and Satyabhama is far easier managed than her brothers.


	28. Uma

There are enough women in Kampilya who love children—seven of her sisters-in-law, three of Drupada’s wives—that Uma goes days on end without seeing Krishnaa’s woebegone brood, and even when she meets them, need only be distantly gracious.

She is glad of it, and gladder yet once a year rolls past and takes with it the greatest burden of grief. Kampilya resounds with the voices of children, the Upapandavas dragged into joy by their cousins.

It is a blessing of her marriage that it has brought Uma no children. She sees no need to take on the burden unasked.


	29. Lakshmanaa

Lakshmanaa hates everything: the salty air, the smirking faces, Samba’s swaggering walk. When Krishna’s wives offer congratulations, she screams till they withdraw. Good. Let them remember that this is no willing marriage.

The night brings Samba.

The morning brings Krishna, querying after her happiness.

Lakshmanaa laughs herself breathless. “Not so happy as your son. Not so happy as you, to see your plans succeed.”

“I had no hand in it.”

“My apologies, O Lord. You only abduct willing women, or marry those their fathers give you, or keep demon-ravaged maidens.”

“You truly _are_ Duryodhana’s daughter.”

“Yes.” Let him remember it.


	30. Uttaraa

Uttaraa is her father’s daughter, soft and sweet-tempered, willing and weak-willed. Her mother’s despair.

When she weds her mother bids her listen to Draupadi, Subhadra, emulate them till mimicry becomes habitual and then ingrained.

She tries, always the obedient child. But Draupadi in those days is living flame and even airy Subhadra like desert-wind: too blistering to bear.

In his year of exile she had loved Brihannala, but she cannot speak to splendid Dhananjaya; she can scarcely speak to Abhimanyu, who spends his scant leisure coaxing smiles from her.

Only Yudhishtir is unchanged, a serene sanctuary amidst these raging warriors.


	31. Upapandavi

The first taste of sorrow comes in the smoke rising from their brothers’ pyres, from a hundred thousand pyres beyond. Smoke rises to the sky with the wailing of bereaved kin, blots out tears and chokes breath in their tender throats.

They come of age in a palace resounding with the voices of the dead, indulged and ignored alike by parents, uncles, grandparents, baby Parikshit and overwhelmed Uttaraa.

They grace thrones in Dwaraka, Matsya, Madra, Kunti, Panchal, Sindhu. They become scholars, hunters, diplomats, medics, mothers who watch their children become parents in turn.

Draupadi’s daughters pass from legend into life.


End file.
